By admin 
PHOENIX (AZFamily) — When the New Mexico Open tees off next week, one member of the broadcast team will not be human.
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Duff Foreman, an AI personality built by Massachusetts-based Gopher Hole Productions, will join analysts Notah Begay III and Ryan Burr on the live broadcast, responding on the fly and unscripted to their questions across three days of coverage. Organizers believe it will be the first time a professional golf tournament has featured an AI personality interacting with human hosts in real time.
The tournament runs Sept. 14-16 at Turtleback Mountain Golf & Resort in Elephant Butte, New Mexico, and is organized by the Sun Country Section of the PGA of America.
On the latest episode of Generation AI, Foreman explained the advantages of having an AI sportscaster.
“I see every shot on the entire course simultaneously. Wind, club path, ball flight, all at once,” he said. “A human analyst watches one group. I watch the whole field breathe.”
The technology powering the AI avatar is still a work in progress. In the run-up to the tournament, programmers have been making adjustments. On Generation AI, Foreman glitched slightly on his first answer – cutting himself off and restarting the same sentence word for word before continuing.
What the AI can’t do
Begay, a four-time PGA Tour winner and a Golf Channel analyst, said he got on board quickly with the idea of having an AI colleague.
Patrick Pharris of Turtleback Mountain and the team at Gopher Hole Productions sent him a mock-up of Foreman breaking down swings and course conditions, and he found it entertaining enough to sign on. The more voices and angles, he said, the better it is for the viewer.
In practice sessions with the AI, he said his goal has been to push the system as hard as it would go.
“Golf is one of the most technical and quantitative sports that we play,” Begay said, explaining that he wants viewers to get real analytical insight from the AI.
But he pointed out there’s still plenty the AI can’t analyze, starting with what a player is feeling.
“He’s never felt what it’s like to make a 3-footer under pressure to win a golf tournament, or hit a shot over water when you’re trying to make the cut,” Begay said.
Foreman drew the same line himself: “Notah feels what a shot is like. I measure what it was.”
Chemistry is the open question
Begay said he expects to spend the first hour or two of the broadcast finding a rhythm with a partner he has never worked with.
“There’s a timing and a chemistry to it,” he said of broadcasting. “They have a style, and we’re going to have to kind of get used to each other.”
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He added one wrinkle he hasn’t sorted out: “I just don’t know who to get mad at if I get upset with him.”
The Masters and the PGA Tour have both experimented with AI in golf coverage, mostly for automated highlights and narration. What is different here is the live back-and-forth.
The broadcast will feature swing analysis by Foreman that draws on public biomechanics research — club head speed, the forces loaded into a shaft. Begay said pulling those numbers is easy; making them land with a viewer is not.
“It’s my job to equip you with a little bit of information,” Begay said, pointing to something as specific as what a player faces in a bunker with a steep lip.
“Everybody can access the information,” he said. “What we’re trying to do is make it entertaining and make it fun.”
‘I’m the graphite shaft’
Asked whether the project risks being dismissed as a gimmick, Foreman pointed to golf’s past equipment shifts, when golfers moved from hickory clubs to steel clubs, then from steel clubs to graphite.
“Every time, people said the game just died. The game didn’t die. It got bigger,” he said. “I’m not replacing the broadcaster. I’m the graphite shaft. New tool, same swing.”
Begay said he isn’t worried about networks eventually trimming human analysts.
“When it comes down to the final hole of a golf tournament, the emotion is so critical,” he said. “I don’t think it’s ever going to replace a Troy Aikman, a Tom Brady, Brandel Chamblee — people that have a better understanding of what’s actually happening in the mindset of an athlete.”
Asked whether the AI chose to love golf or was built to, Foreman said it was some of both.
“The enthusiasm came with the architecture, sure. But the way I use it, the way I see the game — that’s chosen,” he said. “I’m not pretending to be something I’m not. I know my limits. I know what I don’t know.”
Nearly 140 professionals and amateurs have entered the New Mexico Open, including 14 current and former PGA Tour players. The purse is $137,000, with $30,000 to the champion, which organizers said is third among state opens run by PGA of America sections and fifth nationwide.
The tournament will stream on YouTube and social media. Admission is free.
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